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Beachcomber: 101 years old and still questioning questions

THE long-running rivalry between the Apostropher Royal, Sir D’Anville O’M’Darlin’, and the Ombudswoman for Conjunctions, Lady Ampersandra Notwith-Standing, has flared up again following the publication of the latest figures on interrogatives.

As soon as these were released, I had a phone call from Sir D’Anville and he sounded furious. “Have you seen the figures?” he spluttered. “That woman’s a menace!” I hadn’t had time to consider the report in detail so I asked Sir D’Anville to tell me the main points.

As I had suspected, his grievance went back to the time several years ago when Lady Ampersandra seized control of the nation’s question marks for her own department from their previous home alongside the royal apostrophes.

“Just look at the figures for the past year,” Sir D’Anville screeched. “The number of times the phrase ‘questions must be asked’ has appeared in the national press over the past year is 38, yet the total for ‘questions must be answered’ is only eight.

That’s 30 questions being asked without having to be answered. That, in my opinion, is a complete waste of question marks.” “What about questions that need to be asked or answered?” I asked. “Might they not redress the balance?” “They might but they don’t,” Sir D’Anville replied. “In fact they make it even worse. There were 58 questions that need to be asked and only 26 needing to be answered. That’s 32 more question marks wasted.”

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“What about rhetorical questions?” I asked. “They neither must nor have to be answered, yet strictly speaking they require question marks.” “I’ve looked into that,” he said. “There have indeed been 52 uses of ‘rhetorical question’ in the press over the past 12 months, but that is still 10 short of accounting for all the unanswered questions.

Furthermore, if we include such statements as ‘I hope you are well’, to which far too many ill-informed people attach a totally unjustified question mark, the wastage of such punctuation marks is worse. “Lady Ampersandra has completely lost control of the situation, leaving questions to be asked, and indeed answered, about her suitability to be left in charge.”

“But that’s the first time you’ve mentioned questions to be asked and answered,” I pointed out. “Your earlier remarks were confined to questions that must, or need to be asked and answered.” “In the past year,” he said sombrely, “the press has recorded 78 instances of the phrase ‘questions to be asked’ and 85 of ‘questions to be answered’. That’s eight questions we expect to be answered without having been asked in the first place. Is that not an outrage?”

“Was that a rhetorical question?” I asked. “That’s optional,” Sir D’Anville replied. “The answer is so obvious that you may take it as rhetorical if you wish. You do not have to answer.” After thinking it over, I decided to take his advice and remain silent on the matter. Answering a question that required no answer would, I felt, have only confused the situation.